


The Letter III

by platonicharmonics



Series: The Matthews Family 'verse [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Aromantic Dutch van der Linde, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love Confessions, Love Letters, M/M, Missing Scene, Queerplatonic Relationships, bonus features
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27645947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/platonicharmonics/pseuds/platonicharmonics
Summary: Across the hall, in Hosea’s bedroom, written on plain paper no less lovingly folded and tucked away in his nightstand, nestled against the worn pages of Dutch’s written words, sat another letter.(Companion piece to Chapter 16 of The Matthews Family)
Relationships: Hosea Matthews/Dutch van der Linde
Series: The Matthews Family 'verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021392
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	The Letter III

**Author's Note:**

> Had this sitting in my mind for a while but I could not for the life of me figure out a way to fit it into the main narrative, bound to Arthur's POV as I was, and I also didn't want it to detract from Arthur's story. So... here's my idea! Slipping things into a "series" so that I can release bonus features like this one whenever something just _cannot_ make the cut into the main narrative but I want to share it anyway.
> 
> Fair warning that if you haven't read the main work, this probably won't make a lick of sense. As for the rest of y'all, I hope you enjoy snooping through Hosea's things ♥

_ My dear Dutch, _

_ I’ve officially sat here for two hours and I haven’t written anything. It’s not because I don’t have anything to say. It’s not even that I have too much to say. I know exactly what I want to say to you. It’s just that it hurts to say it. _

_ I’m tired, Dutch. _

_ I’ve been tired for twelve years. I know I’ve always been a morbid son of a bitch, but for the most part I’ve thought it helpful. A way to temper your rose-tinted visions - or fits, as I’d call them. I try and slow things down, you try and speed things up. That’s been our arrangement for a long time, now. Like two steam engines facing opposite directions, bound by a chain, dragging each other one direction or the other with sparks and screaming metal. _

_ I wish I could say you’ve helped me, but for the most part you’ve just made me more tired. How much blood is on our hands since California, old friend? Innocent blood? The blood of our family? I’ve never stopped grieving Bessie, but you also made me grieve Jenny, and Davey, and Mac, and our own honor and morality, and I will never stop grieving for them, either. _

_ I started grieving you before you even died. _

_ What happened to us, Dutch? What became of us? What ran you away from me, or made you think I was running away from you? What made you distance yourself from Arthur and John and Tilly, as if they haven’t looked up to you as their guiding star for twenty years? You always had a habit of twisting yourself up in knots, and I’d always skin my hands trying to untie you, and in return you’d always find a way to make me see every morning as a gift, to warm up my old bones and my cold heart, make me smile and laugh. But then I couldn’t seem to untie you. And you couldn’t seem to make me smile. _

_ The world has changed, dearest. I think we changed, too. And none of it for the better. _

_ I loathe you for all you’ve harmed and taken from me. I hate you for how you’ve hurt our sons. I cannot and will never forgive you for making them feel like your love was conditional. _

_ Arthur has tuberculosis, Dutch. He got it intimidating that honest farmer with a family that Strauss wrapped around his finger. Remember when you and I would call it a “necessary evil”? Necessary for what? What could possibly be worth the life of our son? What were we even striving towards if not the lives of all these kids we took in? What’s the point of getting a home for the whole family if we lay them on a sacrificial altar to get there? _

_ I have spent countless nights sitting at Arthur’s bedside, looking at him pale and sweating, wiping the blood and phlegm from his mouth as he fights to even breathe. If only you could see him now, Dutch. He’s lost so much weight. His eyes are sunken. He’s being slowly consumed right in front of me, and some days are better, some are worse, but most days I feel like I’m the one who’s dying instead of him. _

_ I’ve been dying for so long, now. Just my luck that it’s right when I’m on the cusp of losing everyone I’ve ever loved that I finally found the courage to get off my ass and give a damn about my own life, huh? _

_ I tried my best, you know. After you cut that chain of ours, leaving me alone with the whole line of our gang behind me, and I the only engine that could carry them. I was never supposed to be the engine of anything. That was your job. But… oh, how I  _ _ tried _ _ , Dutch. I was so  _ _ horrifically tired _ _ , but I lead them. I also tried to keep them together, but I couldn’t quite manage that. I lost all our money and they’re all scattered to the winds, now. I don’t know who’s alive or who’s dead or where they are. I’m too busy washing bloodstains out of bedsheets. My mind constantly dreams about the peace a bullet in my head would bring me, but I know now to separate such thoughts from  _ _ myself _ _. If I can save our son, I will. If I can’t, I’ll use the rest of my life to try and find and help the others, and if I can’t do that, I’ll use whatever worth my hide has to try and aid whatever folk I can, like how you and I did all those years ago, all carefree and giggly and sleeping with empty stomachs because we ran across folk with sad faces. Arthur makes me smile and laugh these days, and I cannot betray the endless love and patience he has shown this wretched old man by taking my life, no matter what the future holds. _

_ Sometimes it fully hits me that you gave up everything you were for me. And how much of a waste it would be to throw that away, too. _

_ What I’ve been lingering on for a while, now, is the question as to  _ _ why _ _ you gave up everything for me. _

_ I have never met a man with as much vigor for life as you. With as many dreams as you. You fully entwined yourself with the world so completely sometimes I swore that your heart fused with life itself. You were this unstoppable force, capable of the most incredible feats of love and also the worst travesties of fear. I have never met anyone with a greater drive to survive than you.  _

_ All that life in you. And you gave it up. For me. An entire gang of loving sons and daughters and brothers and sisters at your back, tens of thousands of dollars on your shoulders to lead them to a peaceful life. You had everything you needed to be happy. To be the victor against the world. _

_ You took all of that and you sacrificed  _ _ all of it _ _ for  _ _ me _ _. _

**_Why?_ **

_ Why didn’t you kill me that first night we met when you caught my hand in your satchel and you had my own gun pressed under my chin? What did you see in that empty fool when you looked into his eyes? I have always seen you as a kind of star, capable of birthing and nurturing life and scorching and taking it in equal measure. What simile would you use for me if you were here? _

_ You made something grow inside me that night, Dutch. You gave me the gift of love. You opened my eyes to the light of the world. You showed me my capacity for kindness. You gave me children. You gave me countless nights laughing into your neck and dancing in your arms and wandering barefoot under the stars and entwining my body with yours. “Best friend” does not encase what we were. I consider it an offense. You were always more than a friend to me, and I know I in return was more than a friend to you, even though you never loved me. You loved me more than the sun loves the moon, I know, but never in the way I loved you. _

_ I was in love with you since the start, Dutch. I still am. And here’s the thing - I don’t care if you abhorred the thought of marriage. I don’t care that you never kissed me on the lips, like you did women. I don’t care if you’d always fall into women’s beds. You were always enough. You always would have been enough. And as long as you always came back to me, as long as I could sleep and sit and stand beside you, that would have been enough. The way we loved each other, in all of its wordlessness, was enough.  _

_ I can still see so clearly the way you looked at me as you were dying. What could we have had if it weren’t for that fear we danced around all these years? What were we afraid of? I know I was afraid of you not loving me the same. That seems so silly and petty now. Was your fear just as petty? The night Bessie and I got married you told me that I deserved someone who could give me everything I wanted, and that you were happy for me. And then after her death, after Anna, when we fell into bed together again, you kept saying that it was just because we were “lonely.” Then you got Molly, but you still kept telling me you were lonely. _

_ I think you were neither afraid nor lonely when you sacrificed yourself for me. Every bastard in the world can keep their romance - I love you, and I know you love me, and to hell with the modifiers. _

_ You do not have my forgiveness, but you will always have my love. _

_ You can rest easy now, my dearest, until I see you again. The memory of you makes me smile. _

_ Yours, always and forever, _

_ Hosea _

**Author's Note:**

> [🎵](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG5GxEHncX0)


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